The United States renamed a military base Friday to honor former US president and famed World War II commander Dwight D. Eisenhower instead of an officer who fought for the pro-slavery breakaway Confederacy.
The base in Georgia — previously known as Fort Gordon — is the last of nine installations to drop the name of a figure who served the Confederate States of America, which was made up of southern states that seceded and were defeated in the 1861-1865 US Civil War.
“It is with great pride that we rename this installation in honor of one of our great generals and presidents,” US Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth said during a ceremony at the base.
Eisenhower was supreme commander of the troops who assaulted Nazi positions in France on D-Day in 1944 and directed subsequent operations that, in concert with Soviet attacks, brought about Germany’s surrender the following year.
After the war, he served as chief of staff of the Army and then as NATO’s first supreme allied commander. He was later elected as the 34th president of the United States, a position he held from 1953 to 1961.
The newly renamed Fort Eisenhower, which is located near the city of Augusta, was a training center during World War II and also prepared troops for service in subsequent conflicts. It is the home of the US Army Cyber Command headquarters and the Army Cyber Center of Excellence.
The base was previously named for John B. Gordon, who reached the rank of lieutenant general in the Confederacy’s forces and was known as an effective officer despite having no military experience before the Civil War.
He was wounded multiple times during the conflict. After its conclusion, he was elected to the US Senate and also served as governor of Georgia.
Calls to change the names of bases honoring Confederate figures gained momentum during nationwide protests against racism and police brutality that were sparked by the 2020 murder of George Floyd, an African American man who died at the hands of a white police officer in Minneapolis.
In the National Defense Authorization Act for 2021, Congress required the establishment of a commission to plan for the removal of Confederate-linked “names, symbols, displays, monuments, or paraphernalia” from Defense Department property, and gave the secretary three years to carry out its recommendations.
